USB port with hard drive. - Toyota Nation Forum : Toyota Car and Truck Forums

ArbyBarby · 12-13-2011, 06:21 PM

Has anyone had any luck using a hard drive with their USB port? Mine works fine with flash drives, but not with my portable USB hard drive. Thoughts?

kingnba6 · 12-13-2011, 06:28 PM

I know in my aftermarket clarion. The hard drive works great. What type of drive are you using ? Sometimes you need to have a certain number of files/folders for it to work. Maybe not enough power for the drive.

ArbyBarby · 12-13-2011, 07:27 PM

It's an Hitachi Touro. It lights and spins up when plugged into the port, then I get "USB error". It is formatted as FAT32.

***sweeneyp*** · 12-13-2011, 08:13 PM

well shoot i was going to suggest the formatting to fat32, but i guess that's not the problem. There might be a maximum size (amount of gb's) the head-unit can handle. I know some aftermarket headunits can only handle so much (the one's I've seem that mention it mention 32gb max thumb-drives)
Also does it start up normally? I know you said it spins up and lights up, but does it seem to take longer than normal to fully spin up? it might be that the usb port isn't providing the full power that a normal usb port provides. those mobile usb powered hard drives usually need that full power to run.

btw,

to Toyota Nation!

kingnba6 · 12-13-2011, 09:19 PM

well im running a 120gb sata harddrive powered by usb. works perfectly. maybe you should google it? or try to format it to the same system as the flash drive?

ArbyBarby · 12-14-2011, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweeneyp

well shoot i was going to suggest the formatting to fat32, but i guess that's not the problem. There might be a maximum size (amount of gb's) the head-unit can handle. I know some aftermarket headunits can only handle so much (the one's I've seem that mention it mention 32gb max thumb-drives)
Also does it start up normally? I know you said it spins up and lights up, but does it seem to take longer than normal to fully spin up? it might be that the usb port isn't providing the full power that a normal usb port provides. those mobile usb powered hard drives usually need that full power to run.

btw,

to Toyota Nation!

Thanks for the welcome.

As far as size goes, the manual only addresses the number of files that the unit can handle. It does spin and the head unit says "loading...loading...loading" and then "USB error".

Let's try this from another angle; Does anyone know what the power specs on the this USB port are? I have noticed that it is not capable of charging an iPhone.

AVConsult · 12-14-2011, 01:24 PM

*up* to to 500mA is the spec. Don't know about Toys USB port current capacity.

*Many* USB hard drives need close to 1000mA to work (they'll often light up but not spinup with one port), which is why they often come with double USB pigtails. In your case, the drive will probably need a separate power connection + USB connection, if the issue is power related.

The Toy head unit may also not be waiting for the hard drive to spin up and become "ready", even if it would operate from one port and getting sufficient current.

kingnba6 · 12-14-2011, 03:10 PM

if power is the case you would need to modify the cable or use like stated before the pig tail usb

ArbyBarby · 12-14-2011, 03:13 PM

Yeah, I am beginning to think power is the problem. I will pick up a splitter and check it out. Thanks guys.

kingnba6 · 12-14-2011, 03:16 PM

or if you are good with splicing and cutting you can like cut the usb cable and attach another usb cable to the power connections only and then have it connected to like a usb charger or something.

ArbyBarby · 12-14-2011, 03:50 PM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812411003

This seems like a cheap enough way to go.

alexsmith · 01-11-2012, 09:25 PM

I had the same issue.

The car would not recognize anything above 32GB. So if you have a HDD that you want to hook up, then you need to have 2 partitions on that drive. One partition should be 32GB (VERY IMPORTANT -make sure that the 32GB are partitioned as FAT32. Otherwise it won't work.) And the rest of the drive partition is a NTFS.

So you can still use your HDD but only 32GB of it and the rest you can have for other files.

There are video's on youtube explaining how to create a FAT32 partition on an external drive. Look it up.

Let me know if this works for you.

ArbyBarby · 01-17-2012, 06:22 PM

Thanks, I will try this out tomorrow.